We often refer to water as a natural resource, in the same way we refer to minerals resources in the ground, or biomass to be harvested. But water is truly different – it is best understood as a verb, not a noun. Specifically, all the freshwater rivers, streams, and groundwater work because they are in a process of flowing. While many resources are dwindling in a warming world, the source of most freshwater we experience is initially evaporation from the ocean which falls across landscapes driving the flow of water we rely on. On a warmer planet, more ocean evaporation than anytime in human history will occur and we would ostensibly have more access to freshwater than ever.
In practice, this is not happening as we have created much of our built environment in a way that interferes with hydrology at all levels: atmospheric, surface, and below-ground. Because of the ways we have managed soils, wetlands, and near-shore environments, we will experience this excess rainfall as floods, storm surges, and mudslides and more.
Beyond our negligence on how land use changes drive poor hydrology, we actively pollute our waterways as well. Agriculture is the biggest culprit, with over application of fertilizer driving algae blooms and oxygen dead zones. Textiles, paper and pulp, oil and gas, and mine tailings all drive substantial volumes of pollution as well.
Doing right by water on planet Earth requires re-assessing the industries driving the pollution and hydrological damage to ask how water can be allowed to flow in ways that best support the biosphere while supporting human goals in tandem. We need to seek to create no long term imbalances. Whenever we allow imbalances, they culminate in collapse, as we have seen with the disappearance of lake Baikal, depletion of the Ogala aquifer, the desertification of the Arabian peninsula or the drying up of the gulf of California delta.
More than any other area, improving how we work with water will avert the most human suffering. It is droughts, floods, and storms that are most likely to displace large populations. While the thoughtful care of hydrology allows more of the landscape to stay covered with vegetation, making our landscapes less vulnerable to disaster, and creating practical cooling through shade and limiting heat island effect. In this century we may go down the route of trying to commoditize water as if it were a noun, but in the absence of clarity and care for the verb of how water moves, these frameworks cannot be appropriately optimized and heighten the possibility of regional conflict.
